MOD 016: Mr. Murphy Just Wrecked Your Race Day

Bounce back from missed deadlines, bad schedules, forgotten equipment, and ruined venues by using a few simple race day risk mitigation strategies.

Merchants of Dirt Episode #16

Bounce back from missed deadlines, bad schedules, forgotten equipment, and ruined venues by using a few simple race day risk mitigation strategies.

Key Take Away #1: Check Your Venue

When you do arrive that morning before your registration opens, you need to know if all your gear made it to the venue, where everything is, where everything goes, and how long it will take you put it all in place.

If something was forgotten, or breaks during setup, you don’t have a wiggle room figure out a solution or replacement.

You also need time to make sure your course is still good. This may include replacing missing course markings, putting up race day boundary tape, and spotting any course changes (like down trees).

Scouting out your venue beforehand is an essential part of your course design process! You need to force yourself to take that one last trip out to the venue today for two very important reasons:

#1 — Everything is right where you left it: Make sure nothing has changed or has been damaged by weather, no one needs access to your venue, and bandits didn’t tear down your arrows and tape.

#2 — Everything needs to flow: Have a plan for where all of your gear will be placed, how your gear will get there, and how your customers will move through your venue.

The morning of race day will be too late for you to deal with real problems.

Pre-checking your venue is a simple part of your process that you should never neglect.

Make it a rule that you will never let your course sit too long without checking it out before race day.

Your customers will thank you, your team will thank you, and your stress level will thank you too!

Key Take Away #2: Check Your Pre-Race Checklist

There is no point to a tool that does not have a use.

To that end, your pre-race day checklist is your tool so that you do not forget to do something or bring something on race day!